


The Distance Between Never and Again

by amieangie



Category: Naruto
Genre: ANBU - Freeform, Alternate Canon, But you dont know if it is Kakashi or Sakura and it is cool and mysterious, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Hatake Kakashi Angst, POV First Person, Sexual Tension, Smut, it wont kill to leave kudos, same age au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:27:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24122839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amieangie/pseuds/amieangie
Summary: Someone once told me that my heart is always beating way too fast.She told me it's not normal.But, is there anything normal at all about any of this?Killing. Dying.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	1. Um

**Author's Note:**

> Not gonna tell if it's Kakashi or Sakura narrating :)  
> also, as always, I have already 4 chapters ready to shine

**i.**

I read once that descending into madness is gradual. That if you gonna punch a sandbag, you have to retreat your hand fast or the bag will get out of your reach. That history can be tell not just by documents, but from pieces of clothes or crystals scattered in scrumbs of past generations.

I read a lot of things, actually. Some of those, I reread. Twice, ten, a hundred times it seems. Some I took notes so I wouldn't forget, so I could use them. I can't recall any of them. I just remember the feeling, the flavour. How they tasted in my mind when I first came across them. Most are bitter, even if they were beautiful. That much I remember, how beautiful they were. But that's all they were, beautiful words in a sheet of paper. Breeze can turn them out or brush them away — forever. Life's not at a poetry book.

My dad read to me once the history of a man that gained a invisibility ring. He was in love with the Queen and when he possessed the ring, he took advantage of his invisibility and slashed open the throat of the King, to be with her. But it backfired. The moment the King fell to his feet, dead, he lost his invisibility and the whole kingdom saw him as a murderer. It was about morals, my father told me. 

I thought about if the first time I sliced open a throat. I expected the whole kingdom to look at me and sentence me to death, to take me as a dishonor. They didn't. They didn't spare a glance at me at first, but after so many, too many throats, they didn't meet me as a shame, they regarded me with compliments. And under wings and over blood, I made my name, bit by bit, but I never could shake the feeling that I was wearing my ring and I was slicing all the Kings, when I wasn't even pursuing a Queen. I was just a murderer, not a romantic. That tasted bitter. 

Right now, I can't taste anything but cover in my mouth.

I taste too much of my own blood in my mouth worth for a lifetime more than it is healthy, of that I am sure. Sometimes, I feel like I am eating my death away. And if I come to believe that I will die and find my mother, father, friends, happiness in the afterlife, would it be wrong to take my own life? When I taste cover I am eating my life away and by that I am eating my death away, but if I have a soul, that means I am immortal, so I should not be afraid of death. Not in the means people say, but literally. If I have a forever living soul, it means I am immortal and immortality is supposed to be good, so what is life for? What should be my approach on death now? Do I fear it, count the days to reach it, avoid it, laugh in the face of danger? 

We are all born and raised to loath death, but at the same time to believe in immortal souls, so why do we fear death? What are we but vessels of passing time? And, yet, what do I do with immorality? 

When I was younger, I met a civilian woman that was 102 years old. I didn't even knew people could get that old and she laughed and told me the same. 

We were there just to fix some stupid shit at her place, but I gave up on curiosity and sneaked into her room. The others were eating, eagerly, always too eagerly. It's always easy to escape during meals. They're always so focused, like the food is going to escape. Chill, ma man, it won't run away, take your time — but I doubt that Naruto thinks this way. 

When I walked into her room, was liking walking into a parchment, because it tasted like that. She had so many books there were no shelves enough to them, so they were stacked one above another, like sand castles. It was the fusion of a forest untouched by the man with the knowledge of all that has been ever touched. My body couldn't taste all of that. I read and reread the titles and they read me back. When I turned to the pictures, I found out she had many, which I assumed was normal for someone with such a vast life. 

She was a beautiful woman.

I came to a halt between two pictures, two team pictures — and an ANBU mask resting by the side. It was a rabbit. 

"Yes, my child," her voice came from the door "this old hands are stained in blood."

She walked way too slowly to the bed, all of my ninja energy begging to be released seeing an old lady move. But only then, in the dim light of candles, I realised she still had grace in the way she moved. It was like a too old lion, ready to die — his majesty will be his companion to the grave. 

"I know, I know. You want to know how someone survive ANBU." Her old face contorted in a soft, motherly smile and I wished I had a grandmother to knit me scarves, make hot cocoa and tell me how to life past 100 and not go crazy after being an assassin. I knew mine were just around the corner. "I was an ANBU captain for six years, until I was forced to retire."

"Shinobi don't retire."

She shook her head as saying  _ foolish, foolish kid. Life is more than shinobi can, shinobi can't. _ Probably, that's what she was thinking. 

"I retired from ANBU, after assisting in the murderer of my sister." She pointed a shaking finger to a photograph, where a woman, identical as her, was smiling in her ANBU gear too. They couldn't be past 20. 

"You killed your sister?" I said before I could stop it. Today, I see that for a woman that's seen over a century, it wouldn't be me to shake her structure. I just used to think big of me at the time, but I could barely see past a fence. 

The woman nodded and a silence extended. I took the picture in my hands and looked at them. They were twins. 

"How?" It was stupid to ask, it was the only thing to ask.

"I assume you've come across the knowledge that in missions you will make decisions that could cost your partner's life in order to save another's, right?" I could only nod and swallow. "My sister wasn't a better woman than me." 

That shocked me. All we always hear is "my brother, my friend, my mother was a better person than me". So when she said her sister wasn't, I almost dropped the photograph. When I returned it to the shelf, I was shaking. 

"I know what you're thinking," she said, fluffing her pillow and I got a flash of a kunai under it. "I shouldn't speak bad of the dead, but it is true. She was complicated and in the end, that's why she died."

I didn't fucking want to ask if she killed her sister for being an asshole. I was an asshole. I am an asshole. I do hope people don't kill me because of that. 

So I thought about death, looking at the girl with the deep lavender eyes that stared back at me with such a ferocity, a  _ fox _ mask in her porch. 

They, sisters, were a rabbit and a fox. Isn't destiny ironic. 

I can't  _ survive _ death. I cannot die and then keep on living. I can't cease to live, my organs stop functioning, my heart stop beating, my blood stop bumping and say that I am alive. That would be stupidity. If I die in an accident, my brains on the floor, I can't say I survived death. So, there isn't life after death. It ends there. So what are we, what are we made of, then? 

I don't live after my death, but do I exist?

"What was her name?" My voice broke the silence like shattering glass, the woman have forgotten I was there as much as I forgot about her. 

"Lira."

"Lira." It did tasted sour in my mouth. "It is a beautiful name." 

Maybe I should pay Lira a visit when I was back, ask her if she was alive there, if we were something but skin and bones and killing machines. Something but hearts beating too fast and air lacking. Maybe she could answer me. 

"I had to kill her because she betrayed the village and tried to kill me." I wish I had left earlier, because then I could keep looking for Lira's name in the stone instead of knowing it wasn't there. "It was during a mission. She was the team captain. Lira killed the other two. They were my teammates. Lira killed my teammates and went to kill me" the air was static when Toraha stopped talking, seeing the scene before her eyes, all those years ago, all that eternity ago. "when I ripped her eyes off — and then her head from her neck. The back up took 10 hours to find us. It was a bloodbath and I was sitting in the middle of it. I still have nightmares."

I remembered her when I ripped off my enemies eyes for the first time and didn't wait for the backup. I almost died, but then again, maybe I could ask her about life after death, as she killed herself in her 104th birthday.

Here, in the dark, it smells like ratt's piss and there's a dead one in the corner, being eaten by his own kind. I think I lost two teeth and a bit of my dignity. Maybe I lost more, maybe less. Is hard to tell when you've been in the dark for, what?, I can't tell without the light, but probably six days in the dark. If I manage to make it out alive, my eyes will burn like hell once I see the morning.

(I've acquired the taste of referring to light in general as "morning" or even "refulgence" or dawn". There are the days I like to call it "beacon" when I am feeling blue. I like the word. I like how it tastes. Is salty. But it burns my tongue, after a while. Everything too salty does. For me, salt is fire in white flocks. And I love it.)

It is not the first time I am being held captive, but it never ceases being boring. My life is at steak, of course, it always is, but without seeing the moon pumping adrenaline to my veins and making my eyes bleed and my heart choke me, it all seems in vain. All the things I've sacrificed and lost seem just so fucking bitter as all the words I've read. 

I miss the light, even though I like to eat myself out as darkness.

There was this day, you see, a while ago — years, months, days, decades, lifetimes, who gives a fuck — I felt like a utter piece of scum. I was utterly disgusted with myself. I can't recall why. But I sat in the middle of a clearing and just let the sunbeam feast on my skin. I wondered how long until my body would set me into motion, so I wouldn't starve to death. You see, our body betrays us — and it goes way deeper than just making us blush or matinal erections or wrinkling our noses. It goes way, way  _ deeper _ . You cannot kill yourself in many ways. 

You can't choke yourself with your bare hands. You can't drown yourself in a bathtub (as so I recall) 'cause your body will startle and jump off the water. You can't starve to death, not if your body knows that there is food and water nearby. It will force you into life. You can't hold your breath until all the oxygen ends (your nostrils, your mouth will cede to the grunting of your lungs and shoot air all across your suicide attempt). There are a lot of ways you betray your body, because that is what suicide is about. It is the ultimate betrayal. 

There are your organs, all well functioning, clocking in, pumping blood that cares your pretty oxygen, your brain is full of synapses, sending everything to you — your hormones, endorphins, alerting the signs of pain, making your heart beat faster, your guts turn, you throat dry. So your body feels utterly betrayed when you end it all. But your body betrayed you first. Where was the endorphin, dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin, when you needed them? Where were they when you were eyeing the rope or jumping in front of explosions to save others? So, who is charged guilty in the end?

I guess I won't never know. It's not like my brain actually answers me — which sets me in a bigger dilemma: have I gone insane on asking myself why is my body not answering to me, as if it is a person that could provide answers.

I wasn't even going to talk about suicide, so I guess I am down here for more than six days, but I am pretty sure they didn't have me six meals.

Who's killing whom in the end? Who betrayed whom first? Was it me or my life itself?

Nah.

You know, let's forget this. My eyes are burning now.

_ I'm out. _

**I've got a room downtown / with a bed and a big TV**

The first thing I do every time I get out of being stupid enough to get caught is look in my captors eyes and ask 

"Did you spit on my food?"

in the lowest, darkest voice I can manage. If they shake their head too much, they did. They're scared. They think you will hurt them worse if they did such a stupid thing. Those who know me sigh at this point. Those who never worked with me before, always get wide eyed and spread around I am fucking crazy. Which, I don't see the point on doing so. 

Everyone knows it already. 

Only once a man admitted he spat on my food. He even said he thought about taking a piss at it as well. When I asked him why he didn't, he said he thought I would notice and when I asked him again what could I possible do if I noticed it, I caught in the air: he knew he was dead the moment he put the chains in my hands. 

So when men denied so fervently the fact that of fucking course what they gave to eat was just for the courtesy of getting off with feeding me with the remainings of his dogs' food, I always enjoyed cutting their partners throat in a way it spat blood in their eyes. 

I am a fucking sadist, is what they say.

I am fucking tired, is what I say. I ate so much dog shit this past years I am surprised I survived to telltale.

The last thing I do after I get out, before heading home, is burning the place down. Not because I am the twisted fuck I am so praised to be. I just want to bury to ashes what happened to me so no one will ever know what made me go insane. 

My eyes are still burning, so I take off with the warmth of my secrets on fire behind me and I keep pretending. 

It doesn't matter. 

_ I'm out. _

**true / it's a beautiful view/ but you know they're gonna set it on fire**

Tsunade hates my reports and I hate writing reports, so she doesn't say anything anymore. She said only once, when I handed her sketches of naked bodies — and she got pissed off when I told her it was pure anatomy. It all died in sake. With Tsunade, it all dies in sake. 

I've been taking too much mission lately. I don't want to stay in the village. I don't want to stay anywhere. Every time I set down lately, an ache comes at me and, no matter how much I scratch it, it just doesn't go away.

I beautifully checked to see if it was physical (I knew it wasn't, but as humans we like to lie to ourselves), but there was no known disease that causes rashes when you are left alone in the quiet. I made my researchers. The bags under my eyes grew as big as the sun, as I refused to sleep. In the missions, my turns to sleep were better taken reading. I  _ had _ to prove this was some rare disease I was suffering from. 

After a month, I collapsed in the shower. I have a new scar now. 

It is funny how chakra healing works. There are just certain things that scar, like losing something precious to never see it again. Like that feeling of your heart being broken like a glass of water in your kitchen when you burn your hand with the too hot liquid — it doesn't matter what you do or that you  _ knew _ your hand was going to burn, your heart was going to break. You heal, but it stays and it is there, sat at your skin to wave at you when you least expect. 

So I have a new scar from exhaustion and Tsunade tried to force me into vacation, but I kept making my way into work, even under her gaze — that's what the sake is for. 

With Tsunade it all dies with sake and she is never awake in the middle of the night, so she can never know. By the sunlight, I am gone. And she knows, but there are still to come the day they will be able to trap me. 

And the ache?

I identified it when I walked into the damned Training Ground 3. There are days I think we should blow that shit sky high. It all became there, so I think it all should end there, but I still don't know what it is and what has to end. So the training grounds remains — and so did the ache. For a whole day. 

I don't know who was the idiot who had the idea of inventing mornings and who was the ticket that went along with it. It was 9 AM in a Tuesday and it just hit me — and I just had no fucking idea.

It was like a sleeping leg. It was tingling and the sun was too hot, the trees weren't shadowing anything, it were all screaming colors and my bed was in so many shades of gray when I left that I wish I could just turn around, go back so years ago and die in a war. 

Maybe that was the ache, after all. Not that. Not a feeling. Not a breeze carrying sounds and parchment smell like, sharing apple smells and promises of better days. 

I broke my hand that day and walked away.

I always walk away. 

**so I can wash the empty hours away //**

**but why can't anything be real?**


	2. Two

**ii.**

So, when I see a lilac sky, my eyes are drawn to it. There is no lilac in my life. Bruises are either yellow, green, blue,  _ purple _ or black. Blood is only red — and crimson, almost black at night or when it's dry. Our clothing are grey and deep green. Our bandages are white — that turn to red and washed to a pale pink. There is no place for lilac in a murderer's life. 

So, when the sky bless me with this impar colour, I can't stop myself onto staring at it as if it is the most beautiful things I've ever seen. And maybe it is. It has been, for quite a while. 

They say beauty is relative, but I've never seen one deny the beauty of a sunset, of the view of top of frozen mountains where all you can see is eternity, of the way the sea eats the horizon. Some things  _ are.  _ Undeniably. 

You see, love. 

Love isn't for me, I conclude when the lilac begins to fade and all the sounds return to me.

A broken rib hurts more than a broken heart — sometimes. 

Pain is relative, is what they say, and they are right, but who is to tell the difference between the ache in my chest from the sharp yells from my bones? Is truth what they say that you can heal a wound in a blink of an eye, but when it comes to emotion, us, human beings, are just a fucked up concept. We're pathetic. We've got nothing. No counterattack, no ace of spades, no training. When we break, we bleed, but we cannot stop it. There is no tissue rebuilt, bandage or band aid that can stop the flow from overwhelming and putting me on my knees. 

And scraped knees hurts too, we just tend to ignore them, when we are burning in the field. But when you are walking down the street and a kid runs toward you and you collapse, your knee will bleed and hurt — that's a reminder you're a fucking human and not a machine. And I wish so many times I could shrug off all my bleeding knees for the lifetime and believe there is no heart in my ribcage. And I wish so many times more I would feel just knee scrape or burn my hand in the oven or just a paper cut. 

But, no, unfortunately, humans beings are doomed to feel too much, sway in ocean of tears and still emerge smiling when the sun and breeze aligns as one. 

Sometimes, we are that lucky. 

Unfortunately, not even myself can come up with this big of a lie. 

Sometimes, I'd rather break every bone in my body, one by one than to stand the way my chest makes it impossible to breath and it is all in my head.

When I was younger, I always thought there was something romantic and inspiring about fighting for the one you love and trying to win them back. But as I sit here, broken and lost, I've realise there's nothing amazing about trying to convince someone to love you back. There's nothing poetic about it. You shattered my fucking heart. 

There are fairy tales, I learnt once. They are some illusory shit, but I guess everything is when you know where to look. No one read me one before I went to bed, so I don't know many but I wish I did. Maybe, then, I would be a better person. Maybe, I would have better stories to tell in the future. 

When I was five, a kid from the Cloud ran into me and asked me if I knew how to tree climb — not tree  _ walk _ , but climb. I kept staring like she was a fucking alien, but by the end of the day I was watching the sun set at the top of the trees, my hands scrapped and my hair dirt. Then, I decided to hook myself upside down and I wish I had stayed that way, with the world upside down and the warm breeze of late summer in my cheeks, so much blissful ignorance.

You see, I don't hate my life. If I did, I would be ungrateful for all the people that died for me to be here — or just for all the people that died, those who knew me and those who didn't. But I also don't love my life.

I always narrow my eyes to those that claim how much they love their lives, their jobs and shit like that. We show too much happiness because we are not. We surround ourselves with people because we feel alone. We buy unnecessary shit to fill voids we don't even know how they got there. 

Don't trust a perfect person. Don't trust yourself. Don't trust shit. Don't get drunk and don't fall in love. That are many " _don't_ " rules I could say, but none of them would get us nowhere.

I'm just talking shit.

The first time I got drunk, I was young — but how young can we be when we kill and torture as a living? I don't remember how young I was, just that I felt I was too young for that. I was so young too many times.

So many had died that day. There was this huge crater and the Earth Style jutsus were just creating a common cove to bury them all together. We don't have time for funerals. 

I sat above the fresh earth, dozens of no ones under me, remain unknown forever, picking roots and every vegetation that remained. I drank so much, everything wasn't feeling right anymore and I don't know if I fell on my back or if the word turned upside down. Maybe both. When I puked, it tangled in my hair and washed my clothes down to the toes of my shoes. I smelled like shit, like the ire of a god, like rotten dreams. 

It is tragic that something in my skin could be more tragic than in his. 

_ him  _

I don't know his name nor his affiliation nor his age. He was burnt to ashes. He was an enemy, I guess. He died within seconds. I don't remember his face. But his skin — it melted and glued to the floor and his screams echo in my ears for what seems to be forever. Even the voices can't compete. The sound one produces when their skin is on fire, the smell of burnt flash, the dark smoke that arises, his scream was tearing his throat in an ode to his death. All I could glimpse was his eyes: they were blue. And then, they weren't. They were just scobs and nothing else.

Just another no one to be buried without a funeral, without a name, without a life previous his death. That's what enemies are for: to die.

But to burn to death in front of my eyes seemed worse than waking up in hell and being told I was the torturer and not the tortured — even though I felt this way alive. Like I was the devil itself, so many times. Specially to  _ him _ , since I was the one that set him on fire and watched him die without moving a muscle.

The things is, no one ever told me the world would shatter my legs and then ask me to stand. No one told me life was gonna be this way. This hard. I knew it wasn't girls in white dresses and fancy flowers and I never wanted to be a civilian. Not just because they died too and sometimes it was even worse. But because I would go down fighting, I would go down with a purpose. But I just wish someone had told me. It wouldn't have made it any easier, but I could pretend. 

Everything hurted. The alcohol still numbed the pain as it had to do at the time, but it still was like a thousand of particles of fire burning into each of my pores and burning the oxygen in my veins into mud. I don't know where the physical part ends and the emotional begins. It is a blur of pain. And it swallowed me whole. The last thing I saw before passing out was a darkish grey cloud roaring. 

It is funny the last things we see before collapsing. I always see the sky, as I am mostly alone.

* * *

I feel lost. Just as lost as kid feels when loses its parents at the grocery store and all my small, low eyes can see is a multitude crashing over me. And then I am meet with three oaths in front of me. And I don't know which direction to take. All of them smell like blood the death stretching its long claws to me. 

**alone/I feel alone**

Which path do you choose when they all will kill the remaining your soul I still have left.

When you miss someone in a grocery store, you go to the place your parents told you it was the meeting point in case it happens. But there was no parents, no grocery store, no apples, dangos, chai tea, silk and loud voices in real life.

The voices are in my head and no matter how loud I scream, tearing my throat, ripping it apart, killing my vocal chords they won't leave. Are they a part of me? Has my body betraying me again? 

Not even the explosion shut the voices down. 

I am a fucking shinobi. I can slice throats of the voices - and be praised and kill my morality. But there is no moral, no wrong or right in violence, in survival. Kill or get killed. That's the only rule. No moral, no rings. Just trepidation.

There are days I scrub my skin so violently to get rid of others people blood, so harshly I tear my own blood beneath my fingernails.

**less then dead, they never were**

In the summer, the sun rises too early. It is barely five AM and the sky is already baby blue. In this light, the blood on my hands could be guache. Like I was painting a beautiful view with my fingers bare. It shines, almost. 

My back hurts. I was crouched the whole night, keeping watch. Then, a trap fired and there it was: slaughter. Another one. I didn't count how many this time. Sometimes, I do. Is a wicked habit of mine. But, again, what isn't wicked down to fucked up in our life?

The birds are singing, as they always do. The crickets came to silence, their night show is over. If is funny, mesmerizing, how nature doesn't give a shit about us. The sun still shines, even if I don't feel. Clouds sing their song and the mountains have its natural fog and the sea shore wets the sand and the crabs feast. 

We are heading home today.  _ Home _ . What a strange word, what a strange concept. Truly, where is home? Your country, your village, your apartment, your friends? I have no friends. They say that home is wherever the heart is. My heart is in the battlefield. So, did Death embraced me as its child?

Death is another confusing concept. Once, I went to a church. Why the Mist has churches, is beyond me. Put they had what they call a priest and they presented me seven deadly sins. Sorry, Seven Deadly sins. It was to be on caption, because it's a important things. At least, that's what he said and what I understood. The water of the shower burns my skin. He told me about Hell. That's this place after the Afterlife you go when you die - and you were a bad,  _ bad _ people. You can't kill, you can't lie, you can't dishonor your parents, you can't wish for the other men's women (that bit made be a bit angry; why is the man the epicenter of everything?) He told me (that's that) because God made the  _ man _ at his image and resemblance. So, is God a man? He laughed and said no. I was confused a fuck. I don't understand God, but he said no one does, not even him, but that God understands us. 

I wish he could explain me to myself. Became I sure as hell (shouldn't say this. It's blasphemy, or something like that, he said). 

The water is peeling my skin with its heat. I asked him if that is what Hell is like and he told me is much, much worse. Maybe God is giving me a free sample and I want to wait for the water tic cool down, but I have no time. I already have another mission. One step closer to damnation.


End file.
